Oh, baby! Charles & Camille McPherson began collaborating even before her birth

Photo by Eduardo Contreras / San Diego Union-Tribune

Dancer Camille McPherson and her father, top jazz saxophonist and composer Charles McPherson, will team up for the San Diego Ballet's world premiere performances of "Reflection and Hope" next weekend.

Dancer Camille McPherson and her father, top jazz saxophonist and composer Charles McPherson, will team up for the San Diego Ballet's world premiere performances of "Reflection and Hope" next weekend. (Photo by Eduardo Contreras / San Diego Union-Tribune)

Internationally acclaimed San Diego jazz saxophonist Charles McPherson and his dancer daughter, Camille, will both be in the spotlight when the San Diego Ballet presents “A Night of Jazz & Dance” Friday through Sunday at Horton Plaza’s Lyceum Theatre.

But their first collaboration of music and movement took place — in a manner — even before Camille was born here in 1992.

“When I was pregnant, Charles would play his sax near me. He’d also put headphones on my tummy of music he thought Camille should hear, like Prokofiev and (jazz piano giant) Bud Powell,” recalled Charles’ wife, Lynn, a veteran classical piano teacher.

She laughed at the memory.

“Charles can be a bit of a hypochondriac. If Camille wasn’t moving around, he’d want to make sure she was alive. So he’d play music on my stomach and she would kick. It was very cool!”

Camille, who turned 25 on Monday, will be kicking in a far more graceful manner at next weekend’s three “A Night of Jazz & Dance” performances.

Two of the three pieces of music to be featured — 2015’s “Sweet Synergy Suite” and the brand new, politically inspired “Reflection & Hope” — were written by her father, who will turn 78 on July 24.

An accomplished composer and arranger, Charles has long been hailed as one of the most highly regarded alto saxophonists in jazz. His first solo album, “Bebop Revisited,” was released in 1964. His most recent, “Love Walked In,” came out last year.

He is also the San Diego Ballet’s new composer-in-residence. It’s a position that has fostered even greater collaboration between him and his daughter, who is now in her fifth season with the company.

“Camille and Charles both strive for excellence and both have a very positive attitude, which is wonderful to have,” said San Diego Ballet Artistic Director Javier Velasco.

“To work with one person like that is a gift. To be able to work with two people like that is more than a gift.”

Symbiotic relationship

Seated side by side, Charles and Camille beamed when asked to share their first memory of each other.

“It was in the birthing room at Kaiser Permanente Zion Medical Center, after seeing her emerge, if you will,” Charles said.

“She wasn’t crying — she was silent — and that was a little strange to me. She looked around the room, as if to say: ‘I’m here!’ Then she saw me and her eyes fixated on me.”

Camille listened to her famous father with an expression that was half warm smile, half “Oh, dad, please!”

“The reason our eyes locked, mom told me, is that you said something to me and then you looked at me,” Camille said. “That’s what I’ve heard — that I recognized your voice from all the times you spoke to me when I was in the womb.”

“OK,” Charles said, grinning. “I fell in love with her at that moment. Of course, I’m still in love with her. But that moment your eyes first meet is a magic moment.”

Photo by Eduardo Contreras / Union-Tribune

Camille McPherson credits her parents for their unwavering support of her quest to become a ballet dancer.

Camille McPherson credits her parents for their unwavering support of her quest to become a ballet dancer. (Photo by Eduardo Contreras / Union-Tribune)

And what is Camille’s first memory of her father?

“Before we moved to Talmadge, we lived in City Heights and I had a baby swing that hung from a giant jacaranda tree,” she said.

“He would swing me and bring all my stuffed animals to me. He did these great voices for each one, and I would laugh. He gave each one of them their own personality.”

“I got pretty good at that,” Charles agreed. “I could have had my own TV show.”

Camille nodded. “It was like having my own ‘Mr. Rogers!’ And he would sing to me.”

Charles looked surprised. “I never sang,” he said.

“You would!” Camille insisted.

“Oh, yes,” Charles said. “The characters would sing.”

With that, Camille launched into the opening line of “S’Wonderful,” George and Ira Gershwin’s classic 1927 ode to love, which her dad sang to her when she was a toddler.

“I used to read fairy tales to her, every night,” he said. “Since she’s a girl, I made a point of deliberately changing some of the stories so that the heroes would be women.”

In the beginning

Charles was born in Joplin, Mo. He was 9 when his family relocated to Detroit, where noted bebop pianist Barry Harris was a mentor. Charles was only 20 when he settled in New York in 1959.

He soon joined the band of iconic bassist and composer Charles Mingus, with whom he earned worldwide attention touring and recording for the next 12 years. He is featured on such landmark albums as “Mingus at Monterey,” “Let My Children Hear Music” and “Mingus at Carnegie Hall.”

Even before he moved to San Diego in 1978, Charles was regarded as one of the most eloquent alto saxophonists in jazz. In 1988, film director Clint Eastwood — an avid jazz fan — featured Charles on the soundtrack to “Bird,” his biopic about bebop sax pioneer Charlie Parker.

“Growing up, I always knew my dad was well-known in the jazz world,” said Camille, who has seen her father perform at prestigious venues in New York, Denver and Vancouver. “That doesn’t translate to being recognized at the grocery store all the time, although that does happen for him.”

Photo by Eduardo Contreras / Union-Tribune

Jazz alto sax great Charles McPherson recorded his first solo album, "Bebop Revisited." in 1964.

In 2016, Charles received the Don Redman Jazz Heritage Award. It is given to “legends of jazz whose musicianship, humanity and dignity serve as an asset to jazz … .”

Charles’ luminous alto playing is ingeniously constructed and deeply felt. Its ingenuity inspired music professor Donnie Norton to write “The Jazz Saxophone Style of Charles McPherson: An Analysis through Biographical Examination and Solo Transcription” as his 2015 doctoral thesis at the University of Northern Colorado.

Camille grew up playing piano and harp, but dance is her greatest passion. She started ballet lessons when she was just 4.

Because of his wife Lynn’s busy schedule as a piano teacher, Charles drove Camille to and from nearly all of her dance lessons as a girl. He also joins Lynn for all of Camille’s performances, unless he is embarked on one of his annual concert tours in this country or abroad.

"You can be the father and a regular guy. Or you can be the mad, crazy neurotic who is so selfish and self-absorbed, and who does what he does at the expense of the world and the lives of people around him to produce wonderful art,” Charles said in a 1995 Union-Tribune interview.

“… I've done both. I've been the wild, crazy person before, really doing a bunch of questionable stuff. But trying to walk the line between both worlds, and partake of both worlds, is an art in itself that really requires organization and artful living."

Camille, who teaches ballet when not dancing, is appreciative of her dad’s devotion.

“He has three other children, but he was quite a bit younger when he had them,” she noted. “After he had me, he was in a different stage in his life. I feel like he has the protectiveness of a father, but with the ‘loving-ness’ of a grandpa. I think I’ll be his ‘baby’ forever, and I’m sure he would agree.”

Velasco has helped guide the San Diego Ballet since its inception 27 years ago. He has had ample opportunity to observe Charles and Camille’s interactions, on stage and off, with each other and with Lynn, who is now on the ballet’s board of directors.

“Lynn is a great supporter of both her husband and her daughter,” Velasco noted. “She has a vision of what they can both accomplish, and she’s not hesitant to get in there, get her hands dirty and make things work. She asks hard questions and get things done. She is a cornererstone of that family.”

As for Charles and Camille, Velasco said: “When they’re working here, they’re both extremely professional and devoted to their work ethic. But when I see them outside of work — even though Charles is very well known — he’s extremely proud of his daughter and her accomplishments, and he supports her tremendously. It’s wonderful to see that kind of doting father and he’s in the audience for her performances that he’s not involved with.

“The rest is like any normal father-daughter relationship. Sometimes, Camille will have admirers at her performances — and Charles will make them very aware that’s he’s her father!”

Camille burst into laugher when later apprised of Velasco’s remarks.

“I take it Javier is referring to young men in the audience,” she said, laughing again. “Oh, my god, yes, that’s true — my father is 100 percent protective of me.”

‘Reflection and Hope’

Camille credits her parents for being consistently supportive of her dancing. While they would have preferred she go to college, she said, they didn’t flinch when she opted to instead join the San Diego Ballet following her studies in Pittsburgh Ballet Theatre’s graduate program.

She also marvels aloud at the close bond she and her parents have, despite the “very different life experiences” of each.

“My mom is a white lady from Southern California,” Camille said. “She is 18 years younger than my dad, a black man who grew up in the South and Midwest. And I’m multiracial and very racially ambiguous-looking. We all do our best to be as open-minded as we can be.”

For Charles and Camille, that open-mindedness includes a shared comic sensibility.

“What they have most in common is their sense of humor and love for inside jokes that they have acquired from the beginning,” Lynn said..

“They laugh together about stuff that doesn’t strike me as funny, but that they think is hilarious! So, what they have most in common, besides their introverted personalities — although they are not shy — is the love of laughter and silliness that only they understand.”

Camille teamed with her father for the San Diego Ballet’s 2015 debut of “Sweet Synergy Suite.” His first collaboration with Velasco, who choreographed the piece, it was underwritten by a $20,000 Creative Catalyst grant from the San Diego Foundation.

“When I got hired by the San Diego Ballet, they had no idea my dad was this famous jazz legend,” Camille recalled. “Then, after a while, they figured it out. And Javier said to my dad: ‘If you ever want to compose something for the company, that would be great’.”

In fact, it took about a year before Velasco realized Camille was a member of such a distinguished family.

“That’s when I found out what Charles did and whose daughter Camille was,” he said. “She’s a very special, unique dancer. She has extremely elongated lines and extreme flexibility. But some dancers go beyond that. Camille exudes this aura of being – I don’t quite how to put it — this aura of suppleness.”

Charles’ new composition for the ballet, “Reflection and Hope,” was written for alto sax, violin, cello and contrabass. It was commissioned by the Velasco before last fall’s presidential election, but written after. The timing had a profound effect on the music’s inspiration and tone.

“I was surprised and appalled Trump won,” said Charles, who grew up when there was still segregation in large swaths of the United States. “So when I say ‘Reflection,’ it’s because the election made me reflect in a deep manner on the central question: ‘Can a democracy actually exist and survive in a pluralistic society?’

“That people voted for him didn’t surprise me. I know there are people that liked Trump’s platform and agreed with it. What was a surprise was that he had all this negative character baggage and they voted for him anyway. Would Obama even have made it to the primaries, when he ran, if he had that same baggage? Would any woman presidential candidate? Absolutely not. So what else was there for me to write about, except the election?”

Camille nodded. “November 9th, the day after the election, was a devastating and horrific day for me,” she said, adding: “I would say one of the purposes of art is to convey the range of the human spirit. For me, I feel like who I am as an artist cannot be separated from who I am as a person. They are interconnected to me.

“I’d also like to think that art speaks a universal language. So, maybe, the new pieces of music my dad wrote may not speak to people on the other side of the political spectrum regarding how they feel about this issue. But, perhaps, they’ll come to the performances and respond to the music itself and to the movement that we put to it.”

Does the “Hope” in “Reflection and Hope” suggest potential catharsis?

“Because the first piece, ‘Reflection,’ is so dark of mood, to write only that would be too much,” Charles explained. “Also, as a human being and as an American, I don’t want to feel hopeless.

“Hope is almost the only (positive) thing you have. Otherwise, what do you have? World War III? Total doom? I don’t want to go there or dwell on that. The only thing you can see is the light at the end of the tunnel, so it’s cathartic to think there is light. Art should inform. And to inform exposes your own feelings about art and life. So I’m informing.”